Pat, my boss-that-was, and boss-to-be-again, suggests that I
investigate ticket prices, as the best deals are frequently only
available to be ticketed in the U.S. Since I'm investigating a trip of
about 15,000 km, at about a week's notice, the best price available
through the airlines and regular travel agents is a fairly large number.
I call Pat and quote him this number. Pat's office hours in the U.K.
end at about 9am Pacific, so it's fairly hard to set up phone calls
such that we are both available; but I manage it on this occasion.

Pat suggests that the fairly large number is in fact too large, and that
I should investigate further. Further investigation reveals the
existence of ticket consolidators and bucket shops (delightful name);
which buy in bulk, and thus get discount deals from the airlines. I
find a price, and email Pat (phone calls being, as mentioned
previously, problematic). Pat does not reply.

I email again. No reply.

With approximately the minimum feasible time for ticket delivery
remaining before the desired date of travel, I phone. Pat, it seems,
has traveled on business; cleverly neglecting to tell me.

I buy the ticket.

The ticket purchase occurs on Friday at about 3pm. I have to receive
the paperwork from the travel agent, sign it, and return it along with
photocopied identification to the travel agent, in time for her to issue
tickets and get them in the courier system before the close of
business. This is complicated by the fact that I don't own a fax
machine, but is executed successfully nonetheless.

On Saturday I buy a new suitcase; my old large suitcase is in
extremely poor nick, and significant portions of it are held together
with gaffer tape.

On Monday, the tickets arrive, with dire warnings to the effect that I
must reconfirm my reservation with the airlines 72 hours prior to
flying. I immediately call and reconfirm, a mere 22 hours prior, with
no difficulty. The airline rep tells me that I must be at the airport two hours
prior, as this is an international flight; but is unable to tell me whether my
flight will be departing Vegas from the international or the domestic terminal.

I pack.

mccarran.com, the web site for Las Vegas's
McCarran airport, is also unable to tell me the correct terminal, at least
on the night prior. It shows gate assignments for flights only up to eight
hours ahead, and thus I need to check it on the Tuesday morning,
just before departing. This is problematic, as my computer is
already packed; so I use HeatherG's computer, which sidesteps the
problem nicely.

The airline rep was wrong: it is an ordinary domestic flight; and I wait
a couple of hours in the gate area for the rest of the passengers to
turn up, and to go through the whole getting-on-the-plane thing.

We fly the short hop to San Francisco, and I make my way to the
international part of the terminal for my next flight. There is nothing
to distinguish it as different, except that to get to it, you have to leave the
domestic secured area, walk across 30 metres of unsecured ground, and and enter the international secured area;
with all of the attendendant metal detecting, X-raying and explosive
sniffing.

As we board the 777, airline personnel collect our exit records. An
exit record is a small piece of paper that Immigration give you when
you enter the country, to surrender when you leave, to prove that you
have left before your visa expired. This is handy for when you want to
get another visa to get back in; the INS tend to look unfavourably
upon those who overstay their visas.

I have not overstayed my visa; but I have no paperwork to prove it.
More than a month before, when my work visa expired, I applied for a
tourist visa. The paperwork was duly submitted; and it is expected
that the INS will issue a receipt for it. I will likely need this receipt when
I attempt to get a visa to re-enter the US. It is to be hoped that this receipt
will in fact materialise some time before my stay in the U.K. is over. (Note
that the receipt will not actually be a visa: the visa will be the result of the
successful processing of my paperwork; the receipt merely indicates that the
INS have successfully received said paperwork.)

The 777 is shiny and new. There is a small LCD TV screen in the
back of every seat (except, presumably, the backs of the seats in the
very back row), and the airline shows movies for about eight of the
nine hours of the flight, in order to keep the passengers quiet.

I'm not sure what the shortest route from San Francisco to Heathrow
is, but at one point I look out of the window and see pack ice
30,000 feet below.

Coming in to land at Heathrow, we are put into a holding pattern for a
few minutes, at an altitude which sets us just above the low cloud
layer. Several other aircraft are visible as we turn; some just above,
some just below the cloud; like sharks over a coral reef.

The pilot mentions that the temperature on the ground is 4 degrees C
(38 F). I have wisely packed my warm jacket at the very top of my
suitcase, for easy access. However, at a later stage in the packing,
I have unwisely used the jacket to pad my mouse and keyboard. So
although the jacket is easily accessible, removing it would leave the
mouse and keyboard rattling loose.

Immigration into the U.K. is trivial: a stream of U.K. citizens walk
past a single officer with their passports open at the picture page.
He doesn't even stamp passports with an arrival stamp. Customs is
equally trivial: a stream of people in the "U.K. and E.C. nothing to
declare" line simply walk past officials, who seem to be singling out
at random perhaps one person in a hundred for actual confirmation
that they indeed have nothing to declare.

The non-secure part of the arrival hall is surprisingly tiny, and
extremely crowded. There are only two ATMs in the entire terminal
(in San Francisco, I had walked passed two ATMs, crossed security,
and walked past two more only five metres away), and one of them is
out of cash. The remaining ATM has, of course, an extremely long
line. I wait, use my US ATM card, and am dispensed several 10
pound notes accordingly.

I buy a ticket on the first bus to Leicester, which is to be at 7:50am,
an hour away. It is in fact 30 minutes late. So I wait, some of the
time in the tiny bus office and some of the time in the
not-quite-freezing cold, for 90 minutes.

The bus ride itself is about two hours. Given that I did not really
sleep on the plane, and that it is now past midnight on the following
day in the time zone that I had originally woken up in, I have moved
into a special sleep-deprivation state that my body goes into when
sufficiently messed around by overnight air travel, 14-hour work days,
and midnight laser tag tournaments; in which I am tired but not
sleepy, and need food, but am not hungry. Worried about the
possibility of missing my stop in Leicester, I elect to stay awake for
the whole bus journey.

The bus trip is not direct, stopping at Luton airport and at one or two
other towns along the way, and has a somewhat surreal quality lent
to it by lack of sleep.

England is old, and built on a smaller scale than America. None
of the motorways we travel on are wider than the road that we live on
in Vegas. We travel under a bridge that looks to be at least 150
years old. Much of the housing we drive past is narrow, cramped
terrace houses; many of the shops are converted houses or terrace
houses.

There are almost no franchises; most businesses are what
Americans would call "Mom and Pop" places (with the implication
that this makes them somehow second class). Many stores have
signs out the front which have not been repainted for forty years.
Many are tiny, and are obviously run by the family that lives directly
above.

The countryside is somewhat similar to large chunks of the eastern
U.S.; Virginia, say. At a few points along our journey there are
small, thin patches of snow lying alongside the road. We drive
through countryside and town, countryside and town, and eventually
arrive in Leicester.

Pat and Katie have explained that Megazone's office in Leicester is a
short walk from the bus station; and that rather than attempt to take
a taxi, I should call, and someone will walk out to meet me. This is
complicated by the fact that I have no coins, and my phone card is
difficult to use from the pulse-dial public telephones. Nevertheless, I
eventually get through, and then wait for someone to come. Pat and
Katie come out themselves to meet me, and we wander back toward
the office, through and across narrow and twisty-turny streets,
following a path that in retrospect I have absolutely no hope of
reconstructing.